Sunday, April 26, 2015
The University of Chicago
The university consists of the College of the University of Chicago, various graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees organized into four divisions, six professional schools, and a school of continuing education. Outside academic circles, Chicago is particularly well known for its professional schools, which include the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Booth School of Business, the Law School, and the Divinity School. The university enrolls approximately 5,000 students in the College and about 15,000 students overall.
University of Chicago scholars have played a major role in the development of various academic disciplines, including: the Chicago school of economics, the Chicago school of sociology, the law and economics movement in legal analysis,[7] the Chicago school of literary criticism, the Chicago school of religion,[8] the school of political science known as behavioralism,[9] and in the physics leading to the world's first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction.[10] The university is also home to the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States.[11]
The University of Chicago is home to many prominent alumni. 89 Nobel laureates[12] have been affiliated with the university as visiting professors, students, faculty, or staff, the fourth most of any institution in the world. In addition, Chicago's alumni include 49 Rhodes Scholars,[13] 2 Fields Medalists,[14] 13 National Humanities Medalists [15] and 13 billionaire graduates.[16]
Contents
1 History
1.1 Founding–1910s
1.2 1920s–1980s
1.3 1990s–2010s
2 Campus
2.1 Satellite campuses
3 Administration and finances
4 Academics
4.1 Undergraduate college
4.2 Graduate schools and committees
4.3 Professional schools
4.4 Associated academic institutions
4.4.1 Library system
4.5 Research
4.6 Arts
5 People
5.1 Student body
5.2 Alumni
5.3 Faculty
6 Athletics
7 Student life
7.1 Student organizations
7.1.1 Student Government
7.2 Fraternities and sororities
7.3 Student housing
7.4 Traditions
8 Notes
9 References
10 External links
History
Main article: History of the University of Chicago
An early convocation ceremony at the University of Chicago
Founding–1910s
Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about the founding and early years.
The University of Chicago was created and incorporated as a coeducational,[17] secular institution in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society and a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller on land donated by Marshall Field.[18] Organized as an independent institution legally, it replaced the first Baptist university of the same name, which had closed in 1886 due to extended financial and leadership problems.[19] William Rainey Harper became the modern university's first president on July 1, 1891, and the university opened for classes on October 1, 1892.[19]
The business school was founded in 1898,[20] and the law school was founded in 1902.[21] Harper died in 1906,[22] and was replaced by a succession of three presidents whose tenures lasted until 1929.[23] During this period, the Oriental Institute was founded to support and interpret archeological work in what was then called the Near East.[24]
In the 1890s, the University of Chicago, fearful that its vast resources would injure smaller schools by drawing away good students, affiliated with several regional colleges and universities: Des Moines College, Kalamazoo College, Butler University, and Stetson University. Under the terms of the affiliation, the schools were required to have courses of study comparable to those at the University, to notify the university early of any contemplated faculty appointments or dismissals, to make no faculty appointment without the university's approval, and to send copies of examinations for suggestions. The University of Chicago agreed to confer a degree on any graduating senior from an affiliated school who made a grade of A for all four years, and on any other graduate who took twelve weeks additional study at the University of Chicago. A student or faculty member of an affiliated school was entitled to free tuition at the University of Chicago, and Chicago students were eligible to attend an affiliated school on the same terms and receive credit for their work. The University of Chicago also agreed to provide affiliated schools with books and scientific apparatus and supplies at cost; special instructors and lecturers without cost except travel expenses; and a copy of every book and journal published by the University of Chicago Press at no cost. The agreement provided that either party could terminate the affiliation on proper notice. Several University of Chicago professors disliked the program, as it involved uncompensated additional labor on their part, and they believed it cheapened the academic reputation of the University. The program passed into history by 1910.[25]
1920s–1980s
In 1929, the university's fifth president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, took office; the university underwent many changes during his 24-year tenure. Hutchins eliminated varsity football from the university in an attempt to emphasize academics over athletics,[26] instituted the undergraduate college's liberal-arts curriculum known as the Common Core,[27] and organized the university's graduate work into its current[when?] four divisions.[26] In 1933, Hutchins proposed an unsuccessful plan to merge the University of Chicago and Northwestern University into a single university.[28] During his term, the University of Chicago Hospitals (now called the University of Chicago Medical Center) finished construction and enrolled its first medical students.[29] Also, the Committee on Social Thought, an institution distinctive of the university, was created.
A group of people in suits standing in three rows on the steps in front of a stone building.
The University of Chicago team that worked on the production of the world's first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction, including Enrico Fermi in the front row and Leó Szilárd in the second.
Money that had been raised during the 1920s and financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation helped the school to survive through the Great Depression.[26] During World War II, the university made important contributions to the Manhattan Project.[30] The university was the site of the first isolation of plutonium and of the creation of the first artificial, self-sustained nuclear reaction by Enrico Fermi in 1942.[30][31]
In the early 1950s, student applications declined as a result of increasing crime and poverty in the Hyde Park neighborhood. In response, the university became a major sponsor of a controversial urban renewal project for Hyde Park, which profoundly affected both the neighborhood's architecture and street plan.[32]
The university experienced its share of student unrest during the 1960s, beginning in 1962, when students occupied President George Beadle's office in a protest over the university's off-campus rental policies. After continued turmoil, a university committee in 1967 issued what became known as the Kalven Report. The report, a two-page statement of the university's policy in "social and political action," declared that "To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures."[33] The report has since been used to justify decisions such as the university's refusal to divest from South Africa in the 1980s and Darfur in the late 2000s.[34]
In 1969, more than 400 students, angry about the dismissal of a popular professor, Marlene Dixon, occupied the Administration Building for two weeks. After the sit-in ended, when Dixon turned down a one-year reappointment, 42 students were expelled and 81 were suspended,[35] the most severe response to student occupations of any American university during the student movement.[36]
In 1978, Hanna Holborn Gray, then the provost and acting president of Yale University, became President of the University of Chicago, a position she held for 15 years.[37]
1990s–2010s
View from the Midway Plaisance
In 1999, then-President Hugo Sonnenschein announced plans to relax the university's famed core curriculum, reducing the number of required courses from 21 to 15. When The New York Times, The Economist, and other major news outlets picked up this story, the university became the focal point of a national debate on education. The changes were ultimately implemented, but the controversy played a role in Sonnenschein's decision to resign in 2000.[38]
In the past decade, the university began a number of multi-million dollar expansion projects. In 2008, the University of Chicago announced plans to establish the Milton Friedman Institute which attracted both support and controversy from faculty members and students.[39][40][41][42][43] The institute will cost around $200 million and occupy the buildings of the Chicago Theological Seminary. During the same year, investor David G. Booth donated $300 million to the university's Booth School of Business, which is the largest gift in the university's history and the largest gift ever to any business school.[44] In 2009, planning or construction on several new buildings, half of which cost $100 million or more, was underway.[45]
Since 2009, a two-billion dollar campaign has brought substantial expansion to the campus, including the unveiling of the Max Palevsky Residential Commons, the South Campus Residence Hall, the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, a new hospital, and a new science building. Since 2011, major construction projects have included the Jules and Gwen Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery, a ten-story medical research center, and further additions to the medical campus of the University of Chicago Medical Center.[46]
On May 1, 2014, Barack Obama's White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault publicly named the University of Chicago as one of many higher education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights "for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints."[47] "Fourth-year Olivia Ortiz filed the original complaint on the claim that the University had mishandled disciplinary procedures after she was sexually assaulted by her then-partner, who has since graduated, over the course of the 2011–2012 academic year. OCR accepted her case in June 2013, based both on the content of Ortiz’s original complaint and on the Maroon Sexual Assault Investigative series from fall 2012, which was cited in the original complaint."[48] The complaint was reported originally by the Chicago Maroon in a 2012 student newspaper investigation of University of Chicago's history of under reporting and mishandling sexual violence complaints filed by students since 2007.[49]
Campus
The campus of the University of Chicago.
The campus of the University of Chicago. From the top of Rockefeller Chapel, the Main Quadrangles can be seen on the left (West), the Oriental Institute and the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics can be seen in the center (North), and the Booth School of Business and Laboratory Schools can be seen on the right (East). The panoramic is bounded on both sides by the Midway Plaisance (South).
The main campus of the University of Chicago consists of 211 acres (85.4 ha) in the Chicago neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Woodlawn, seven miles (11 km) south of downtown Chicago. The northern and southern portions of campus are separated by the Midway Plaisance, a large, linear park created for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. In 2011, Travel+Leisure listed the university as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States.[50]
Many older buildings of the University of Chicago employ Collegiate Gothic architecture like that of the University of Oxford. For example, Chicago's Mitchell Tower (left) was modeled after Oxford's Magdalen Tower (right).
The first buildings of the University of Chicago campus, which make up what is now known as the Main Quadrangles, were part of a "master plan" conceived by two University of Chicago trustees and plotted by Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb.[51] The Main Quadrangles consist of six quadrangles, each surrounded by buildings, bordering one larger quadrangle.[52] The buildings of the Main Quadrangles were designed by Cobb, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, Holabird & Roche, and other architectural firms in a mixture of the Victorian Gothic and Collegiate Gothic styles, patterned on the colleges of the University of Oxford.[51] (Mitchell Tower, for example, is modeled after Oxford's Magdalen Tower,[53] and the university Commons, Hutchinson Hall, replicates Christ Church Hall.[54])
After the 1940s, the Gothic style on campus began to give way to modern styles.[51] In 1955, Eero Saarinen was contracted to develop a second master plan, which led to the construction of buildings both north and south of the Midway, including the Laird Bell Law Quadrangle (a complex designed by Saarinen);[51] a series of arts buildings;[51] a building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the university's School of Social Service Administration;,[51] a building which is to become the home of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies by Edward Durrell Stone, and the Regenstein Library, the largest building on campus, a brutalist structure designed by Walter Netsch of the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.[55] Another master plan, designed in 1999 and updated in 2004,[56] produced the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center (2003),[56] the Max Palevsky Residential Commons (2001),[51] South Campus Residence Hall and dining commons (2009), a new children's hospital,[57] and other construction, expansions, and restorations.[58] In 2011, the university completed the glass dome-shaped Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, which provides a grand reading room for the university library and prevents the need for an off-campus book depository.
The site of Chicago Pile-1 is a National Historic Landmark and is marked by the Henry Moore sculpture Nuclear Energy.[59] Robie House, a Frank Lloyd Wright building acquired by the university in 1963, is also a National Historic Landmark,[60] as is room 405 of the George Herbert Jones Laboratory, where Glenn T. Seaborg and his team were the first to isolate plutonium.[61] Hitchcock Hall, an undergraduate dormitory, is on the National Register of Historic Places.[62]
Campus of the University of Chicago
Snell-Hitchcock, an undergraduate dormitory constructed in the early 20th century, is part of the Main Quadrangles.
Rockefeller Chapel, constructed in 1928, was designed by Bertram Goodhue in the neo-Gothic style
The Henry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences was built in 1969.[63]
The Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, opened in 2003 and designed by Cesar Pelli, houses the volleyball, wrestling, swimming, and basketball teams.[64]
Satellite campuses
The University of Chicago also maintains facilities apart from its main campus. The university's Booth School of Business maintains campuses in Singapore, London, and the downtown Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago. The Center in Paris, a campus located on the left bank of the Seine in Paris, hosts various undergraduate and graduate study programs.[65] In fall 2010, the University of Chicago also opened a center in Beijing, near Renmin University's campus in Haidian District. The most recent addition is a center in New Delhi, India, which opened in 2014.
Administration and finances
The University of Chicago is governed by a board of trustees. The Board of Trustees oversees the long-term development and plans of the university and manages fundraising efforts, and is composed of 50 members including the university President.[66] Directly beneath the President are the Provost, fourteen Vice Presidents (including the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Investment Officer, and Dean of Students of the university), the Directors of Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab, the Secretary of the university, and the Student Ombudsperson.[67] As of August 2009, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees is Andrew Alper,[68] and the President of the university is Robert Zimmer. In December 2013 it was announced that the Director of Argonne National Laboratory, Eric Isaacs, would become Provost.
The university's endowment was the 12th largest among American educational institutions and state university systems in 2013[69] and as of 2012 was valued at $6.571 billion.[70]
Academics
University rankings
National
ARWU[71] 8
Forbes[72] 24
U.S. News & World Report[73] 4
Washington Monthly[74] 53
Global
ARWU[75] 9
QS[76] 11
Times[77] 11
The academic bodies of the University of Chicago consist of the College, four divisions of graduate research, six professional schools, and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies (a continuing education school). The university also contains a library system, the University of Chicago Press, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, and the University of Chicago Medical Center, and holds ties with a number of independent academic institutions, including Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. The university is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.[78]
The university runs on a quarter system in which the academic year is divided into four terms: Summer (June–August), Autumn (September–December), Winter (January–March), and Spring (April–June).[79] Full-time undergraduate students take three to four courses every quarter[80] for approximately eleven weeks before their quarterly academic breaks. The school year typically begins in late September and ends in mid-June.[79]
Undergraduate college
Main article: College of the University of Chicago
The College of the University of Chicago grants Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 50 academic majors[81] and 28 minors.[82] The college's academics are divided into five divisions: the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division, the Physical Sciences Collegiate Division, the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, the Humanities Collegiate Division, and the New Collegiate Division.[83] The first four are sections within their corresponding graduate divisions, while the New Collegiate Division administers interdisciplinary majors and studies which do not fit in one of the other four divisions.[84]
Undergraduate students are required to take a distribution of courses to satisfy the university's core curriculum known as the Common Core. In 2012-2013, the Core classes at Chicago were limited to 17 students, and are generally led by a full-time professor (as opposed to a teaching assistant).[85] As of the 2013–2014 school year, 15 courses and demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language are required under the Core.[86] Undergraduate courses at the University of Chicago are known for their demanding standards, heavy workload and academic difficulty; according to Uni in the USA, "Among the academic cream of American universities – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and the University of Chicago – it is UChicago that can most convincingly claim to provide the most rigorous, intense learning experience."[87]
Eckhart Hall houses the university's math and statistics departments.
Graduate schools and committees
The university graduate schools and committees are divided into four divisions: Biological Sciences, Humanities, Physical Sciences, and Social Sciences. In the autumn quarter of 2014, the university enrolled 3,468 graduate students: 461 in the Biological Sciences Division, 819 in the Humanities Division, 1,024 in the Physical Sciences Division, and 1,164 in the Social Sciences Division.[88]
The university is home to several committees for interdisciplinary scholarship, including the Committee on Social Thought.
Professional schools
The university contains six professional schools: the Pritzker School of Medicine (which is a part of the Biological Sciences Division), the Booth School of Business, the Law School, the Divinity School, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, and the School of Social Service Administration (SSA). The total enrollment for these six professional schools was 5,086 students in the 2009 spring quarter: 2,878 students in the business school, 344 in the Divinity School, 452 in the medical school, 269 in the Harris School, 494 in SSA, and 649 in the Law School.[89]
The Law School is accredited by the American Bar Association, the Divinity School is accredited by the Commission on Accrediting of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, Pritzker is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.[78]
Associated academic institutions
The University of Chicago Lab Schools, a private day school run by the university
The university runs a number of academic institutions and programs apart from its undergraduate and postgraduate schools. It operates the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (a private day school for K-12 students and day care),[90] the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School (a residential treatment program for those with behavioral and emotional problems),[91] and four public charter schools on the South Side of Chicago administered by the university's Urban Education Institute.[92] In addition, the Hyde Park Day School, a school for students with learning disabilities, maintains a location on the University of Chicago campus.[93] Since 1983, the University of Chicago has maintained the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, a mathematics program used in urban primary and secondary schools.[94] The university runs a program called the Council on Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and Humanities, which administers interdisciplinary workshops to provide a forum for graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present scholarly work in progress.[95] The university also operates the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States.[96]
The Joseph Regenstein Library
Library system
The University of Chicago Library system encompasses six libraries[97] that contain a total of 9.8 million volumes, the 11th most among library systems in the United States.[98] The University's main library is the Regenstein Library, which contains one of the largest collections of print volumes in the United States. The John Crerar Library contains more than 1.3 million volumes in the biological, medical and physical sciences and collections in general science and the philosophy and history of science, medicine, and technology.[99] The university also operates a number of special libraries, including the D'Angelo Law Library, the Social Service Administration Library, and the Eckhart Library for mathematics and computer science, which closed temporarily for renovation on July 8, 2013.[100][101] Harper Memorial Library no longer contains any volumes; however it is the only 24 hour study space on campus.
Research
Aerial view of Fermilab, one of the science research laboratories partially operated by the University of Chicago
In fiscal year 2006, the University of Chicago spent US$305,301,000 on scientific research.[102] It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as an institution with "very high research activity"[103] and is a founding member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the Association of American Universities.
The university operates 12 research institutes and 113 research centers on campus.[104] Among these are the Oriental Institute—a museum and research center for Near Eastern studies owned and operated by the university—and a number of National Resource Centers, including the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Chicago also operates or is affiliated with a number of research institutions apart from the university proper. The university partially manages Argonne National Laboratory, part of the United States Department of Energy's national laboratory system, and has a joint stake in Fermilab, a nearby particle physics laboratory, as well as a stake in the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. Faculty and students at the adjacent Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago collaborate with the university,[105] In 2013, the University announced that it was affiliating the formerly independent Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.[106] Although formally unrelated, the National Opinion Research Center is located on Chicago's campus.
The University of Chicago has been the site of some important experiments and academic movements. In economics, the university has played an important role in shaping ideas about the free market[107] and is the namesake of the Chicago school of economics, the school of economic thought supported by Milton Friedman and other economists. The university's sociology department was the first independent sociology department in the United States and gave birth to the Chicago school of sociology.[108] In physics, the university was the site of the Chicago Pile-1 (the first self-sustained man-made nuclear reaction, part of the Manhattan Project), of Robert Millikan's oil-drop experiment that calculated the charge of the electron,[109] and of the development of radiocarbon dating by Willard F. Libby in 1947. The chemical experiment that tested how life originated on early Earth, the Miller–Urey experiment, was conducted at the university. REM sleep was discovered at the university in 1953 by Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky. [110]
Arts
Saieh Hall for Economics, housing the Department of Economics and the Becker Friedman Institute
The UChicago Arts program joins academic departments and programs in the Division of the Humanities and the College, as well as professional organizations including the Court Theatre, the Oriental Institute, the Smart Museum of Art, the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago Presents, and student arts organizations. The university has an artist-in-residence program and scholars in performance studies, contemporary art criticism, and film history. It has offered a doctorate in music composition since 1933 and in Cinema & Media studies since 2000, a master of fine arts in visual arts (early 1970s), and a master of arts in the humanities with a creative writing track (2000). It has bachelor’s degree programs in visual arts, music, and art history, and, more recently, Cinema & Media studies (1996) and theater & performance studies (2002). The College’s general education core includes a “dramatic, music, and visual arts” requirement, requiring students to study the history of the arts, stage desire, or begin working with sculpture. Several thousand major and non-major undergraduates enroll annually in creative and performing arts classes.[111] UChicago is often considered the birthplace of improvisational comedy as the Compass Players student comedy troupe evolved into The Second City improv theater troupe in 1959. The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opened in October 2012, five years after a $35 million gift from alumnus David Logan and his wife Reva. The center includes spaces for exhibitions, performances, classes, and media production. The Logan Centre was designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. This building is actually entirely glass. The brick is a facade designed to keep the glass safe from the wind. The architects later removed sections of the bricks when pressure arose in the form of complaints that the views of the city were blocked.
People
See also: List of University of Chicago people and List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Chicago
There have been 87 Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Chicago,[112] 17 of whom were pursuing research or on faculty at the university at the time of the award announcement.[113]
In addition, many Chicago alumni and scholars have won the Fulbright awards[114] and 49 have matriculated as Rhodes Scholars.[115]
Student Body Demographics, Spring Quarter 2012[A] By sex[116]
College Graduate
schools Professional
schools University
total
Male 51.3% 58.3% 61.2% 56.3%
Female 48.7% 41.7% 38.8% 43.7%
By race[117]
College Graduate
schools Professional
schools University
total
International student 9.7% 31.2% 20.6% 18.9%
African American 4.5% 2.8% 4.8% 4.3%
Native American 0.1% 0.3% 0.1% 0.2%
Arab/Middle Eastern/
North African 0.6% 0.5% 0.1% 0.2%
Asian 16.9% 4.9% 13.5% 12.4%
Pacific Islander 0.06% 0.00% 0.00% 0.02%
Hispanic/Latino 9.0% 3.7% 4.8% 6.0%
Multiracial 4.0% 2.9% 2.0% 2.9%
White 42.8% 42.0% 48.2% 44.2%
Unspecified 12.4% 11.6% 5.9% 10.7%
Student body
In the fall quarter of 2014, the University of Chicago enrolled 5,792 students in the College, 3,468 students in its four graduate divisions, 5,984 students in its professional schools, and 15,244 students overall.[88] In the 2012 Spring Quarter, international students comprised almost 19% of the overall study body, over 26% of students were domestic ethnic minorities,[116] and about 44% of enrolled students were female.[118] The middle 50% band of SAT scores for the undergraduate class of 2015, excluding the writing section, was 1420–1530,[119] the average MCAT score for entering students in the Pritzker School of Medicine in 2011 was 36,[120] and the median LSAT score for entering students in the Law School in 2011 was 171.[121] In 2015, the College of the University of Chicago had an acceptance rate of 7.8% for the Class of 2019, the lowest in the college's history.[122]
Alumni
Main article: List of University of Chicago alumni
In 2004, the University of Chicago claimed 133,155 living alumni.[123]
Notable alumni in the field of government and politics include community organizer Saul Alinsky, Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod, Attorney General and federal judge Robert Bork, Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Prime Minister of Canada William Lyon Mackenzie King and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.
In business, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Goldman Sachs and MF Global CEO as well as former Governor of New Jersey Jon Corzine, Arley D. Cathey, Bloomberg L.P. CEO Daniel Doctoroff, Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan, Morningstar, Inc. founder and CEO Joe Mansueto, Chicago Cubs owner and chairman Thomas S. Ricketts, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver are graduates.
In journalism, notable graduates include New York Times columnist David Brooks, Washington Post columnist David Broder, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, The Progressive columnist Milton Mayer, statistical analyst Nate Silver, and CBS News correspondent Rebecca Jarvis.
In literature, writers Lauren Oliver, Philip Roth, Studs Terkel, Susan Sontag, and Kurt Vonnegut are graduates.
In the arts and entertainment, composer Philip Glass, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham, Bungie video game developer founder Alex Seropian, Serial host Sarah Koenig, and film director Philip Kaufman are graduates.
American Civil Rights Movement leaders Vernon Johns and Myles Horton, Tuskegee Airmen commander Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., and African-American history scholar Carter G. Woodson are all alumni.
In economics, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Herbert A. Simon, Paul Samuelson, Thomas Sowell and Eugene Fama are all graduates.
In science, alumni include astronomers Carl Sagan and Edwin Hubble, NASA astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, geneticist James Watson, environmentalist David Suzuki, balloonist Jeannette Piccard, biologists Ernest Everett Just and Lynn Margulis, computer scientist Richard Hamming, and geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson.
Other prominent alumni include anthropologist Donald Johanson, psychologist John B. Watson, chess grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky, and international relations scholar Samuel P. Huntington.
Three students from the university have been prosecuted in notable court cases, they include infamous thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, as well as high school science teacher John T. Scopes who was tried in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Notable former students who did not graduate include novelist Saul Bellow, film critic Roger Ebert, Oracle Corporation founder and the third richest man in America Larry Ellison, and director, writer and comedian Mike Nichols.
The most famous fictional alumnus of the university is the archaeologist Indiana Jones.
Faculty
Notable faculty in physics have included A. A. Michelson, Robert A. Millikan, Arthur H. Compton, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Luis Walter Alvarez, Murray Gell-Mann, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Tsung-Dao Lee, and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
In law, the President of the United States of America Barack Obama, Richard Posner, and Nobel laureate in Economics Ronald Coase have served on the faculty.
Philosophers John Dewey, George H. Mead, Hannah Arendt and Bertrand Russell, as well as writers T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison and J.M. Coetzee have all served on the faculty.
Past faculty have also included Egyptologist James Henry Breasted, mathematician Alberto Calderón, economist Friedrich Hayek, meteorologist Ted Fujita, chemists Glenn T. Seaborg and Yuan T. Lee, cancer researchers Charles Brenton Huggins and Janet Rowley, astronomer Gerard Kuiper, linguist Edward Sapir, and the founder of McKinsey & Co., James O. McKinsey.
Current faculty include paleontologists Neil Shubin and Paul Sereno, physicist Yoichiro Nambu, economists Lars Peter Hansen and Steven Levitt, Shakespeare scholar David Bevington, and political scientists John Mearsheimer and Robert Pape.
Athletics
Main article: Chicago Maroons
The athletic logo used by the University of Chicago Maroons
The University of Chicago hosts 19 varsity sports teams: 10 men's teams and 9 women's teams,[124] all called the Maroons, with 502 students participating in the 2012–2013 school year.[124]
The Maroons compete in the NCAA's Division III as members of the University Athletic Association (UAA). The university was a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and participated in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball and Football and was a regular participant in the Men's Basketball tournament. In 1935, the University of Chicago reached the Sweet Sixteen.[124] In 1935, Chicago Maroons football player Jay Berwanger became the first winner of the Heisman Trophy. However, the university chose to withdraw from the conference in 1946 after University President Robert Maynard Hutchins de-emphasized varsity athletics in 1939 and dropped football.[125] (In 1969, Chicago reinstated football as a Division III team, resuming playing its home games at the new Stagg Field
Yale University
Yale is organized into twelve constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and ten professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the University owns athletic facilities in Western New Haven, including the Yale Bowl, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forest and nature preserves throughout New England. The University's assets include an endowment valued at $23.9 billion as of September 27, 2014, the second largest of any educational institution in the world.[1]
Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.[7] The Yale University Library, serving all twelve schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States.[8][9] Besides academic studies, students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League.
Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 13 living billionaires,[10] and many foreign heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress and many high-level U.S. diplomats, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry. Fifty-two Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University as students, faculty, or staff, and 230 Rhodes Scholars graduated from the University.[11]
Contents
1 History
1.1 Early history of Yale College
1.1.1 Origins
1.1.2 Curriculum
1.1.3 Students
1.2 19th century
1.2.1 Sports and debate
1.2.2 Expansion
1.3 20th century
1.3.1 Behavioral sciences
1.3.2 Biology
1.3.3 Medicine
1.3.4 Faculty
1.3.5 History and American Studies
1.3.6 Women
1.3.7 Class
1.3.8 Town-gown relations
1.4 21st century
2 Administration and organization
2.1 Leadership
2.2 Staff and labor unions
3 Campus
3.1 Notable nonresidential campus buildings
3.2 Campus safety
4 Academics
4.1 Admissions
4.2 Collections
4.3 University rankings
4.4 Faculty, research, and intellectual traditions
5 Campus life
5.1 Residential colleges
5.2 Student organizations
5.3 Traditions
5.4 Athletics
5.4.1 Song
5.4.2 Mascot
6 Notable people
6.1 Benefactors
6.2 Notable alumni and faculty
7 Yale in fiction and popular culture
8 Notes and references
9 Further reading
9.1 Secret societies
10 External links
History
Charter creating Collegiate School, which became Yale College, October 9, 1701
A Front View of Yale-College and the College Chapel, Daniel Bowen, 1786.
Early history of Yale College
Origins
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School," passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers: Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, James Noyes, James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb and Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's library.[12] The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".
Originally known as the "Collegiate School," the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson,[13] in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut.
First diploma awarded by Yale College, granted to Nathaniel Chauncey, 1702.
Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president Increase Mather and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.[14]
In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted a successful businessman named Elihu Yale, who lived in Wales but had been born in Boston and whose father David had been one of the original settlers in New Haven, to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in Madras as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College. Meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology.[15] It had a profound affect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his original theology known as the "new divinity". In 1722 the Rector and six of his friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced that they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Theodore Clapp became president in 1745, and struggle to return to college to Calvinist orthodoxy; but he did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.[16]
Old Brick Row in 1807.
Curriculum
Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period—the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment—thanks to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were both instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum at Yale, while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, "irrelevance" of curricula, desperate need for endowment, and fights with the Connecticut legislature.[17]
Serious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original words. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, president of the College from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in the Hebrew language as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language (as was common in other schools), requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study the language) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase אורים ותמים (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in July 1779 when hostile British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the College. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, Secretary to the British General in command of the occupation, interceded and the College was saved. Fanning later was granted an honorary degree LL.D., at 1803,[18] for his efforts.
Woolsey Hall in c. 1905
Students
As the only college in Connecticut, Yale educated the sons of the elite.[19] Offenses for which students were punished included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience to college authorities. During the period, Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal on its side.[20]
The emphasis on classics gave rise to a number of private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose primarily as forums for discussions of modern scholarship, literature and politics. The first such organizations were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753, and Brothers in Unity in 1768.[21]
19th century
Men leaning on the old Yale fence facing Chapel Street, c. 1874.
The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, mathematics, and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for colleges and universities in the United States. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized that a significant portion of their students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The Yale report meant the classics would not be abandoned. All institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual track. In the decentralized environment of higher education in the United States, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge because no one could afford to be completely modern or completely classical.[22] A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought about by the Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a whole man possessed of religious values sufficiently strong to resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting him from without.[23] Perhaps the most well-remembered[citation needed] teacher was William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909. He taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. He bested President Noah Porter, who disliked social science and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.[24]
Until 1887, the legal name of the university was "The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven." In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale gained its current, and shorter, name of "Yale University."[25]
Sports and debate
The Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the prototype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, equally well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who "regretted" that he "had but one life to lose" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied the heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Frank Stover in the novel Stover at Yale (1911) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly the students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, and the alumni, as well as the team itself.[26]
Along with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected elite British concepts about 'amateurism' in sports and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American, such as football.[27] The Harvard–Yale football rivalry began in 1875.
Yale's four-oared crew team, posing with 1876 Centennial Regatta trophy, won at Philadelphia.
Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in the first intercollegiate debate, and 1909, the year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these early debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members even received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There even were rallies sending off the debating teams to matches. Yet, the debates never attained the broad appeal that athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, as is the case in sports, and that scoring is subjective. In addition, with late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the human body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor the society was coming apart.[28]
In 1909–10, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the previous reforms of 1905–06 to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government upon the sport. President Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate changes to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The big three had tried to operate independently of the majority, but changes did reduce injuries.[29]
Expansion
Connecticut Hall, oldest building on the Yale campus, built between 1750 and 1753.
Yale expanded gradually, establishing the Yale School of Medicine (1810), Yale Divinity School (1822), Yale Law School (1843), Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847), the Sheffield Scientific School (1847),[30] and the Yale School of Fine Arts (1869). In 1887, as the college continued to grow under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed Yale University. The university would later add the Yale School of Music (1894), the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (founded by Gifford Pinchot in 1901), the Yale School of Public Health (1915), the Yale School of Nursing (1923), the Yale School of Drama (1955), the Yale Physician Associate Program (1973), and the Yale School of Management (1976). It would also reorganize its relationship with the Sheffield Scientific School.
Expansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of tremendous expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming that an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Many of Porter's contemporaries criticized his administration, and historians since have disparaged his leadership. Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative.[31] He did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a rapidly changing culture. He may have misunderstood some of the challenges of his time, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence and growth of the modern university.
Richard Rummell's 1906 watercolor of the Yale campus, facing north.
20th century
Behavioral sciences
Between 1925 and 1940, philanthropic foundations, especially ones connected with the Rockefellers, contributed about $7 million to support the Yale Institute of Human Relations and the affiliated Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology. The money went toward behavioral science research, which was supported by foundation officers who aimed to "improve mankind" under an informal, loosely defined human engineering effort. The behavioral scientists at Yale, led by President James R. Angell and psychobiologist Robert M. Yerkes, tapped into foundation largesse by crafting research programs aimed to investigate, then suggest, ways to control, sexual and social behavior. For example, Yerkes analyzed chimpanzee sexual behavior in hopes of illuminating the evolutionary underpinnings of human development and providing information that could ameliorate dysfunction. Ultimately, the behavioral-science results disappointed foundation officers, who shifted their human-engineering funds toward biological sciences.[32]
Biology
Slack (2003) compares three groups that conducted biological research at Yale during overlapping periods between 1910 and 1970. Yale proved important as a site for this research. The leaders of these groups were Ross Granville Harrison, Grace E. Pickford, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson, and their members included both graduate students and more experienced scientists. All produced innovative research, including the opening of new subfields in embryology, endocrinology, and ecology, respectively, over a long period of time. Harrison's group is shown to have been a classic research school; Pickford's and Hutchinson's were not. Pickford's group was successful in spite of her lack of departmental or institutional position or power. Hutchinson and his graduate and postgraduate students were extremely productive, but in diverse areas of ecology rather than one focused area of research or the use of one set of research tools. Hutchinson's example shows that new models for research groups are needed, especially for those that include extensive field research.[33]
Medicine
Milton Winternitz led the Yale Medical School as its dean from 1920 to 1935. An innovative, even maverick, leader, he not only kept the school from going under but also turned it into a first-class research institution.[citation needed] Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medicine" and the study of humans in their culture and environment. He established the "Yale System" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he also created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the Psychiatry Department, and built numerous new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, unfortunately lasted for only a few years before the opposition of resentful anti-Semitic colleagues drove him to resign.[34]
Faculty
Before World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions.[35]
History and American Studies
The American studies program reflected the worldwide anti-Communist ideological struggle. Norman Holmes Pearson, who worked for the Office of Strategic Studies in London during World War II, returned to Yale and headed the new American studies program, in which scholarship quickly became an instrument of promoting liberty. Popular among undergraduates, the program sought to instruct them in the fundamentals of American civilization and thereby instill a sense of nationalism and national purpose.[36] Also during the 1940s and 1950s, Wyoming millionaire William Robertson Coe made large contributions to the American studies programs at Yale University and at the University of Wyoming. Coe was concerned to celebrate the 'values' of the Western United States in order to meet the "threat of communism."[37]
Women
Women studied at Yale University as early as 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.[38]
In 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female, declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969.[39] Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate;[40] she was also the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first class to have women starting from freshman year; at the time, all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall at the south end of Old Campus.
A decade into co-education, rampant student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning behind the case changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and the Yale Women's Center.[41] In March 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and recent graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine Broad Recognition, alleging that the university had a hostile sexual climate.[42] In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct.[43]
Class
Yale, like other Ivy League schools, instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants of notable families in the student body (see numerus clausus), and was one of the last of the Ivies to eliminate such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.[44]
Town-gown relations
Yale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in a myriad of community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.[45]
21st century
In 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students.[46] In July 2012, the Peking University-Yale University Program ended due to weak participation.[46]
In 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: "First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders."[47]
President George W. Bush, a Yale alumni, criticized the university for the snobbery and intellectual arrogance he encountered as a student there.[48][49]
The Boston Globe wrote that "if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale."[50] Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. Presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated Presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees during this period include John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (Vice President, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (Vice President, 1972). Other Yale alumni who made serious bids for the Presidency during this period include Hillary Rodham Clinton (2008), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).
Several explanations have been offered for Yale’s representation in national elections since the end of the Vietnam War. Various sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on many of the future candidates.[51] Yale President Richard Levin attributes the run to Yale’s focus on creating "a laboratory for future leaders," an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster.[51] Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: "We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale."[50] Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes "an ethos of organized activity" at Yale during the 20th century that led John Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Joseph Lieberman to manage the Yale Daily News.[52] Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: "It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school."[53] CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the "son and grandson of alumni", and for a "member of a politically influential family."[54] New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller and The Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows credit the culture of community and cooperation that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.[55]
During the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his own Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for "liberalism and elitism".[56][57] In 2004 Howard Dean stated, "In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation".[58]
In 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location – the others are Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara – for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative.[59] As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, "Debating Globalization".[60] As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, "Understanding Politics and Politicians."[61] Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools’ affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care—a growing field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but "no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL".[62]
New international Yale initiatives launched included (among many others):
Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, promoting international education University-wide;
Global Health Initiative, uniting and expanding global health efforts across campus;
Yale India Initiative, expanding the study of and engagement with India;
Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, bridging the gap between academia and the world of public policy; and
Yale China Law Center, promoting the rule of law in China.
Yale - Management Guild
New global research and educational partnerships included (among many others):
Yale-Universidad de Chile International Program in Astronomy Education and Research;
Peking-Yale Joint Center for Plant Molecular Genetics and Agrobiology;
Todai–Yale Initiative for the Study of Japan;
Fudan-Yale Biomedical Research Center in Shanghai;
Yale-University College London Collaboration; and
UNSAAC-Yale Center for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Culture in Peru.
The most ambitious international partnership to date is Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort with the National University of Singapore to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring an innovative curriculum that weaves Western and Asian traditions, set to open in August 2013.[63][64][65]
Administration and organization
Leadership
School founding
School
Year founded
Yale College
1701
Yale School of Medicine
1810
Yale Divinity School
1822
Yale Law School
1843
Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
1847
Sheffield Scientific School[30]
1847
Yale School of Fine Arts
1869
Yale School of Music
1894
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
1901
Yale School of Public Health
1915
Yale School of Nursing
1923
Yale School of Drama
1955
Yale School of Management
1976
The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, is the governing board of the University.
Yale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $1.5 million.[66]
The Yale Provost's Office has launched several women into prominent university presidencies. In 1977 Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed acting President of Yale from this position, and went on to become President of the University of Chicago, the first woman to be full president of a major university. In 1994 Yale Provost Judith Rodin became the first female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002 Provost Alison Richard became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2004, Provost Susan Hockfield became the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2007 Deputy Provost Kim Bottomly was named President of Wellesley College. In 2003, the Dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and now heads Swarthmore College.
The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the professional schools.[67] In 2008 Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford.[68] Former Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead serves as the President of Duke University.
Staff and labor unions
Main article: Federation of Hospital and University Employees
Much of Yale University's staff, including most maintenance staff, dining hall employees, and administrative staff, are unionized. Clerical and technical employees are represented by Local 34 of UNITE HERE and service and maintenance workers by Local 35 of the same international. Together with the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), an unrecognized union of graduate employees, Locals 34 and 35 make up the Federation of Hospital and University Employees. Also included in FHUE are the dietary workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital, who are members of 1199 SEIU.[69] In addition to these unions, officers of the Yale University Police Department are members of the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees.[70] Finally, Yale security officers voted to join the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in fall 2010 after the National Labor Relations Board ruled they could not join AFSCME; the Yale administration contested the election.[71]
Yale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes.[72] There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and The New York Times wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S.[73] Yale's unusually large endowment exacerbates the tension over wages. Moreover, Yale has been accused of failing to treat workers with respect.[74] In a 2003 strike, however, the university claimed that more union employees were working than striking.[75] Professor David Graeber was 'retired' after he came to the defense of a student who was involved in campus labor issues
The University of Cambridge
Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 constituent colleges and over 100 academic departments organised into six schools.[8] The university occupies buildings throughout the town, many of which are of historical importance. The colleges are self-governing institutions founded as integral parts of the university. In the year ended 31 July 2014, the university had a total income of £1.51 billion, of which £371 million was from research grants and contracts. The central university and colleges have a combined endowment of around £4.9 billion, the largest of any university outside the United States.[9] Cambridge is a member of many associations and forms part of the "golden triangle" of leading English universities and Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre. The university is closely linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster known as "Silicon Fen".
Students' learning involves lectures and laboratory sessions organised by departments, and supervisions provided by the colleges. The university operates eight arts, cultural, and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum and a botanic garden. Cambridge's libraries hold a total of around 15 million books, 8 million of which are in Cambridge University Library which is a legal deposit library. Cambridge University Press, a department of the university, is the world's oldest publishing house and the second-largest university press in the world.[10][11] Cambridge is regularly placed among the world's best universities in different university rankings.[12][13][14] Beside academic studies, student life is centred on the colleges and numerous pan-university artistic activities, sports clubs and societies.
Cambridge has many notable alumni, including several eminent mathematicians, scientists, economists, writers, philosophers, actors, politicians, and 90 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with it.[15] Throughout its history, the university has featured in literature and artistic works by numerous authors including Geoffrey Chaucer, E. M. Forster and C. P. Snow.
Contents
1 History
1.1 Foundation of the colleges
1.2 Mathematics and mathematical physics
1.3 Modern period
1.3.1 Parliamentary representation
1.4 Women's education
1.5 Myths, legends and traditions
2 Locations and buildings
2.1 Buildings
2.2 Sites
2.3 "Town and Gown"
3 Organisation and administration
3.1 Colleges
3.2 Schools, faculties and departments
3.3 Central administration
3.3.1 Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor
3.3.2 Senate and the Regent House
3.3.3 Council and the General Board
3.4 Finances
3.4.1 Benefactions and fundraising
3.5 Affiliations and memberships
4 Academic profile
4.1 Admissions
4.1.1 Procedure
4.1.2 Access
4.2 Teaching
4.3 Research
4.4 Graduation
4.5 Libraries and museums
4.6 Publishing and assessments
4.7 Reputation and rankings
5 Student life
5.1 Students' Union
5.2 Sport
5.3 Societies
5.4 Newspapers and radio
5.5 JCR and MCR
5.6 Formal Halls and May Balls
6 Notable alumni and academics
6.1 Mathematics and sciences
6.2 Humanities, music and art
6.3 Literature
6.4 Sports
6.5 Education
6.6 Politics
7 In literature and popular culture
8 Gallery
9 See also
10 Notes
11 References
12 Bibliography
13 External links
History
See also: Timeline of Cambridge history
The monks from nearby Ely, Cambridgeshire, which was a bishopric church, were thought to have been responsible for the scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation that served in the foundations of the university.[16] The university was established by scholars from Oxford in 1209,[17] although, in order to claim precedence, it is common for Cambridge to trace its founding to the 1231 charter from King Henry III granting it the right to discipline its own members (ius non-trahi extra) and an exemption from some taxes. (Oxford would not receive a similar enhancement until 1248.)
A bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach "everywhere in Christendom".[18] After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290,[19] and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318,[20] it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.[19]
Foundation of the colleges
Clare College (left) and part of King's College, including King's College Chapel (centre), built between 1441 and 1515
Emmanuel College Chapel
Emmanuel College Chapel
The colleges at the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, but they have left some indicators of their time, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.[21]
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse, Cambridge's first college, in 1284. Many colleges were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it the newest full college (it was previously an "Approved Society" affiliated with the university).
In medieval times, many colleges were founded so that their members would pray for the souls of the founders, and were often associated with chapels or abbeys. A change in the colleges' focus occurred in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. King Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law[22] and to stop teaching "scholastic philosophy". In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law, and towards the classics, the Bible, and mathematics.
As Cambridge moved away from Canon Law, it also moved away from Catholicism. As early as the 1520s, Lutheranism and what was to become more broadly known as the Protestant Reformation were making their presence felt in the intellectual discourse of the university. Among those involved was Thomas Cranmer, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. As it became convenient to Henry VIII in the 1530s, the King looked to Cranmer and others (within and without Cambridge) to craft a new path that was different from Catholicism yet also different from what Martin Luther had in mind.
Nearly a century later, the university was at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even common folk saw the ways of the Church of England as being too similar to the Catholic Church and that it was used by the crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritan movement and at Cambridge, it was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St Catharine's Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's College.[23] They produced many "non-conformist" graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or pulpit, the approximately 20,000 Puritans who left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), attended Sidney Sussex.
Mathematics and mathematical physics
Sir Isaac Newton was a student of the University of Cambridge
Examination in mathematics was once compulsory for all undergraduates studying for the Bachelor of Arts degree, the main first degree at Cambridge in both arts and sciences. From the time of Isaac Newton in the later 17th century until the mid-19th century, the university maintained an especially strong emphasis on applied mathematics, particularly mathematical physics. The exam is known as a Tripos.[24] Students awarded first-class honours after completing the mathematics Tripos are termed wranglers, and the top student among them is the Senior Wrangler. The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos is competitive and has helped produce some of the most famous names in British science, including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin and Lord Rayleigh.[25] However, some famous students, such as G. H. Hardy, disliked the system, feeling that people were too interested in accumulating marks in exams and not interested in the subject itself.
Pure mathematics at Cambridge in the 19th century had great achievements but also missed out on substantial developments in French and German mathematics. Pure mathematical research at Cambridge finally reached the highest international standard in the early 20th century, thanks above all to G. H. Hardy and his collaborator, J. E. Littlewood. In geometry, W. V. D. Hodge brought Cambridge into the international mainstream in the 1930s.
Although diversified in its research and teaching interests, Cambridge today maintains its strength in mathematics. Cambridge alumni have won six Fields Medals and one Abel Prize for mathematics, while individuals representing Cambridge have won four Fields Medals.[26] The University also runs a Master of Advanced Study course in mathematics.
Modern period
Trinity Lane in the snow, with King's College Chapel (centre), Clare College Chapel (right), and the Old Schools (left)
After the Cambridge University Act formalised the organizational structure of the University, the study of many new subjects was introduced, such as theology, history and modern languages.[27] Resources necessary for new courses in the arts, architecture and archaeology were generously donated by Richard Fitzwilliam of Trinity College.[28] Between 1896 and 1902, Downing College sold part of its land to build the Downing Site, comprising new scientific laboratories for anatomy, genetics and Earth sciences.[29] During the same period, the New Museums Site was erected, including the Cavendish Laboratory, which has since moved to the West Cambridge Site, and other departments for chemistry and medicine.[30]
In the First World War, 13,878 members of the University served and 2,470 were killed. Teaching, and the fees it earned, came almost to a stop and severe financial difficulties followed. As a consequence the University first received systematic state support in 1919, and a Royal Commission appointed in 1920 recommended that the University (but not the Colleges) should receive an annual grant.[31] Following the Second World War, the University saw a rapid expansion of student numbers and available places; this was partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists.[32]
Parliamentary representation
Main article: University of Cambridge (UK Parliament constituency)
The university was one of only eight UK universities to hold a parliamentary seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The constituency was created by a Royal Charter of 1603 and returned two members of parliament. It was abolished in 1950 by the Representation of the People Act 1948.
The constituency was not a geographical area. Its electorate consisted of the graduates of the University. Before 1918 the franchise was restricted to male graduates with a Doctorate or MA degree.
Women's education
Newnham College, one of three existing women's colleges
For many years only male students were enrolled into the university. The first colleges for women were Girton College (founded by Emily Davies) in 1869 and Newnham College in 1872 (founded by Anne Clough and Henry Sidgwick), followed by Hughes Hall in 1885 (founded by Elizabeth Phillips Hughes as the Cambridge Teaching College for Women), Murray Edwards College (founded by Rosemary Murray as New Hall) in 1954, and Lucy Cavendish College in 1965. The first women students were examined in 1882 but attempts to make women full members of the university did not succeed until 1948.[33] Women were allowed to study courses, sit examinations, and have their results recorded from 1881; for a brief period after the turn of the twentieth century, this allowed the "steamboat ladies" to receive ad eundem degrees from the University of Dublin.[34]
From 1921 women were awarded diplomas which "conferred the Title of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts". As they were not "admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts" they were excluded from the governing of the university. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to colleges established only for women. Darwin College, the first wholly graduate college of the University, matriculated both men and women students from its inception in 1964 – and elected a mixed fellowship. Of the undergraduate colleges, starting with Churchill, Clare and King's Colleges, the former men's colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. One of the female-only colleges, Girton, also began to admit male students from 1979, but the other female-only colleges did not do likewise. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford, ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining United Kingdom University with female-only colleges (Newnham, Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish).[35][36] In the academic year 2004–5, the university's student sex ratio, including post-graduates, was male 52%: female 48%.[37]
Myths, legends and traditions
The Mathematical Bridge over the River Cam (at Queens' College)
Main article: University of Cambridge legends
See also: Category:Terminology of the University of Cambridge
As an institution with such a long history, the University has developed a large number of myths and legends. The vast majority of these are untrue, but have been propagated nonetheless by generations of students and tour guides.
A discontinued tradition is that of the wooden spoon, the 'prize' awarded to the student with the lowest passing grade in the final examinations of the Mathematical Tripos. The last of these spoons was awarded in 1909 to Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, an oarsman of the Lady Margaret Boat Club of St John's College. It was over one metre in length and had an oar blade for a handle. It can now be seen outside the Senior Combination Room of St John's. Since 1909, results were published alphabetically within class rather than score order. This made it harder to ascertain who the winner of the spoon was (unless there was only one person in the third class), and so the practice was abandoned.
Each Christmas Eve, BBC radio and television broadcasts The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. The radio broadcast has been a national Christmas tradition since it was first transmitted in 1928 (though the festival has existed since 1918). The radio broadcast is carried worldwide by the BBC World Service and is also syndicated to hundreds of radio stations in the USA. The first television broadcast of the festival was in 1954.[38][39]
Great Court of King's College
Locations and buildings
Buildings
The university occupies a central location within the city of Cambridge, with the students taking up a significant proportion (nearly 20%) of the town's population and heavily distorting the age structure.[40] Most of the older colleges are situated nearby the city centre and river Cam, along which it is traditional to punt to appreciate the buildings and surroundings.[41]
Examples of notable buildings include King's College Chapel,[42] the history faculty building[43] designed by James Stirling; and the Cripps Building at St John's College.[44] The brickwork of several of the colleges is also notable: Queens' College contains "some of the earliest patterned brickwork in the country"[45] and the brick walls of St John's College provide examples of English bond, Flemish bond and Running bond.[46]
The entrance to the Cavendish Laboratory on the New Museums Site
The Faculty of Education
The Faculty of Law on the Sidgwick Site
Sites
The university is divided into several sites where the different departments are placed. The main ones are:[47]
Addenbrooke's
Downing Site
Madingley/Girton
New Museums Site
Old Addenbroke's
Old Schools
Silver Street/Mill Lane
Sidgwick Site
West Cambridge
The university's School of Clinical Medicine is based in Addenbrooke's Hospital where students in medicine undergo their three-year clinical placement period after obtaining their BA degree,[48] while the West Cambridge site is undergoing a major expansion and will host a new sports development.[49] In addition, the Judge Business School, situated on Trumpington Street, provides management education courses since 1990 and is consistently ranked within the top 20 business schools globally by the Financial Times.[50]
Given that the sites are in relative close proximity to each other and the area around Cambridge is reasonably flat, one of the favourite modes of transport for students is the bicycle: a fifth of the journeys in the town is made by bike, a figure enhanced by the fact that pupils are not permitted to hold car park permits, except under special circumstances.[51]
"Town and Gown"
The relationship between the university and the city has not always been positive. The phrase Town and Gown is employed to differentiate inhabitants of Cambridge from students at the university, who historically wore academical dress. There are many stories of ferocious rivalry between the two categories: in 1381, strong clashes brought about attacks and looting of university properties while locals contested the privileges granted by the government to the academic staff. Following these events, the Chancellor was given special powers allowing him to prosecute the criminals and re-establish order in the city. Attempts to reconcile the two groups followed over time, and in the 16th century agreements were signed to improve the quality of streets and student accommodation around the city. However, this was followed by new confrontations when the plague hit Cambridge in 1630 and colleges refused to help those affected by the disease by locking their sites.[52]
Nowadays, these conflicts have somewhat subsided and the University has become an opportunity for employment among the population, providing an increased level of wealth in the area.[53] The enormous growth in the number of high-tech, biotech, providers of services and related firms situated near the town has been termed the Cambridge Phenomenon: the addition of 1,500 new, registered companies and as many as 40,000 jobs between 1960 and 2010 has been directly related to the presence and importance of the educational institution.[54]
Organisation and administration
View over Trinity College, Gonville and Caius, Trinity Hall and Clare College towards King's College Chapel, seen from St John's College chapel. On the left, just in front of King's College chapel, is the University Senate House
Cambridge is a collegiate university, meaning that it is made up of self-governing and independent colleges, each with its own property and income. Most colleges bring together academics and students from a broad range of disciplines, and within each faculty, school or department within the university, academics from many different colleges will be found.
The faculties are responsible for ensuring that lectures are given, arranging seminars, performing research and determining the syllabi for teaching, overseen by the General Board. Together with the central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor, they make up the entire Cambridge University. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the University (the Cambridge University Library), by the Faculties (Faculty libraries such as the Squire Law Library), and by the individual colleges (all of which maintain a multi-discipline library, generally aimed mainly at their undergraduates).
Colleges
Main article: Colleges of the University of Cambridge
The President's Lodge at Queens' College
The Bridge of Sighs at St John's College
The colleges are self-governing institutions with their own endowments and property, founded as integral parts of the university. All students and most academics are attached to a college. Their importance lies in the housing, welfare, social functions, and undergraduate teaching they provide. All faculties, departments, research centres, and laboratories belong to the university, which arranges lectures and awards degrees, but undergraduates receive their supervisions—small-group teaching sessions, often with just one student—within the colleges. Each college appoints its own teaching staff and fellows, who are also members of a university department. The colleges also decide which undergraduates to admit to the university, in accordance with university regulations.
Cambridge has 31 colleges, of which three, Murray Edwards, Newnham and Lucy Cavendish, admit women only. The other colleges are mixed, though most were originally all-male. Darwin was the first college to admit both men and women, while Churchill, Clare, and King's were the first previously all-male colleges to admit female undergraduates, in 1972. In 1988 Magdalene became the last all-male college to accept women.[55] Clare Hall and Darwin admit only postgraduates, and Hughes Hall, Lucy Cavendish, St Edmund's and Wolfson admit only mature (i.e. 21 years or older on date of matriculation) students, encompassing both undergraduate and graduate students. All other colleges admit both undergraduate and postgraduate students with no age restrictions.
Colleges are not required to admit students in all subjects, with some colleges choosing not to offer subjects such as architecture, history of art or theology, but most offer close to the complete range. Some colleges maintain a bias towards certain subjects, for example with Churchill leaning towards the sciences and engineering,[56] while others such as St Catharine's aim for a balanced intake.[57] Others maintain much more informal reputations, such as for the students of King's College to hold left-wing political views,[58] or Robinson College and Churchill College's attempts to minimise its environmental impact.[59]
Costs to students (accommodation and food prices) vary considerably from college to college.[60][61] Similarly, college expenditure on student education also varies widely between individual colleges.[62]
There are also several theological colleges in Cambridge, separate from Cambridge University, including Westcott House, Westminster College and Ridley Hall Theological College, that are, to a lesser degree, affiliated to the university and are members of the Cambridge Theological Federation.[63]
The 31 colleges are:[64]
King's College heraldic shield King's
Trinity Hall heraldic shield Trinity Hall
Sidney Sussex College heraldic shield Sidney Sussex
Darwin College Arms.svg Darwin
Trinity College coat of arms Trinity
Corpus Christi heraldic shield Corpus Christi
Downing College heraldic shield Downing
Wolfson College Crest Wolfson
St John's College heraldic shield St John's
Queens' College heraldic shield Queens'
Girton crest.svg Girton
Clare Hall heraldic shield Clare Hall
St Catharine's College heraldic shield St Catharine's
Newnham College heraldic shield Newnham
Robinson College heraldic shield Robinson
Peterhouse heraldic shield Peterhouse
Jesus College heraldic shield Jesus
Selwyn College heraldic shield Selwyn
Lucy Cavendish College heraldic shield Lucy Cavendish
Clare College heraldic shield Clare
Christ's College heraldic shield Christ's
Arms of Fitzwilliam College Fitzwilliam
St Edmund's College crest.png St Edmund's
Pembroke College heraldic shield Pembroke
Magdalene College heraldic shield Magdalene
Churchill College heraldic shield Churchill
Hughes Hall heraldic shield Hughes Hall
Gonville and Caius College heraldic shield Gonville & Caius
Emmanuel College heraldic shield Emmanuel
MurrayEdwardsCollegeCrest.svg Murray Edwards
Homertoncollegecambridgecrest.png Homerton
